Emmanuel Macron will travel to Nouakchott, Mauritania, on Tuesday to participate in a G5 Sahel summit to take stock of the anti-jihadist struggle in this region where more than 5,000 French soldiers are deployed, the Elysée announced on Friday.
The head of state will go back and forth during the day from Paris to meet with his G5 Sahel counterparts (Niger, Chad, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Mali), the president of the African Union Commission and the Secretary General of the International Organization of La Francophonie.
"The security situation is improving"
After this private meeting, the six leaders will meet by videoconference with "several heads of state and government of countries and organizations members of the coalition for the Sahel", including the President of the European Council Charles Michel, the Chancellor German Angela Merkel, Italian Council President Giuseppe Conte and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, said the Elysee.
This summit will be held six months after that of Pau (southwest of France) in January, where the six leaders had decided to intensify the anti-jihadist struggle in the face of the resurgence of attacks in the region, which, mixed with conflicts intercommunal, killed 4,000 in 2019, five times more than in 2016 according to the UN. Six months later, "the security situation is improving" but "remains deeply fragile", recently summarized the French Minister for the Armed Forces, Florence Parly.
Multiplication of offensives in the region
Since Pau and the sending of 500 additional French soldiers, Operation Barkhane and its Sahelian partners have multiplied the offensives in the region, in particular in the so-called "three borders" zone, on the borders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, sanctuary of the Islamic State in the Grand Sahara (EIGS) group.
Other operations were also carried out in central Mali and northern Mali, where French forces killed in early June the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqmi), the Algerian Abdelmalek Droukdal.
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- Jihadism
- Mauritania
- World
- Emmanuel Macron
- Sahel